Location: Perth, Western Australia- 'when shaping the axe's handle, the rule is always close at hand'

Posts: 2,860

the name Muad'dib

A lot of the names that Herbert uses are based upon Arabic words (or at least, are Arabic-sounding). The Fremen in his books are an essentially Arabic culture, although with certain aspects that don't signify any particular race (the stillsuits they wear, for instance).

It's also interesting to note that their 'bluer than blue eyes' are a result of chronic abuse of and addiction to the powerful drug Melange, which is one of the bases of their culture and religion.

(This is going here because I can't post outside of Rants, but found the topic in the Lounge interesting).

PS: I also use an Arabic name for posting on the 'net occasionally... the name is Qa'fir, which is the Arabic word for a heretic or disbeliever (and is also the root word of the Afrikaans word 'kaffir', apparently, although this has nothing to do with why I chose it).

I have seen the word Muhammed Al Dib in the Quoran ,but I have since been unable to locate it.
I will continue to search as the local Islamic center was not as much help as I thought they'd be in locating the context of that name.

Location: Perth, Western Australia- 'when shaping the axe's handle, the rule is always close at hand'

Posts: 2,860

As I said, I brought it up because I saw a post on it in the Lounge, but can't comment on it there because I'm a dirty stinking anti.

If you could find out what the seperate words (that is, al, dib, and muad) mean, you could work out what they mean put together. Al, I think, has something to do with God (or Allah, as adherents of Islam call him).

Location: Perth, Western Australia- 'when shaping the axe's handle, the rule is always close at hand'

Posts: 2,860

While the Germanic 'kaefer' is more likely to be used as a term in Afrikaans than an Arabic one, I'm pretty sure the Afrikaners assimilated terms from all sorts of sources when the language was written down formally. Who knows?

Dune was good.
Dune Messiah was OK.
Children of Dune was the best.
All the others kinda dragged on. All it was was Leto toying around with different people for different reasons. The writing was good but Herbert needed to have a different main character in the last 2 or so, just for variety.

Mohamed Dib is a famous algerian writer, actually dead. Frank Herbert may have heard of him.
Furthermore, we can notice Herbert uses the word Feydayin to point out the freemen, and calls Paul MuadDib the Mahdi, which means the holy knight in arabic.

Location: Perth, Western Australia- 'when shaping the axe's handle, the rule is always close at hand'

Posts: 2,860

Well, melange is also powerfully addictive as well as having a vast effect upon human capabilities, no? So it could be considered a drug, as opposed to a spice as Herbert refers to it as (possibly he did so to avoid negative reactions from people reading it/interpreting it)?

Drugs are anything which we put into our body which chemically has a significant effect upon it's operations, whereas spices are generally just used for seasoning on food.

Huh? I wasn't making 'a big thing' out of your nick... I just found the thread interesting. And where on earth did I say I wanted to challenge you on the Dune books? As I said, I merely found the original post interesting.

(I apologise for mis-quoting you.. I was quoting from memory. All apologies again).